Wednesday, December 30, 2009

New Authors Signing Up!

I have some new authors signing up to write books for Craft e-Revolution! Hooray! Please let your crafty and blog write-y friends know about it:


I continue to blog there, as well. If you are interested in a discussion about entrepreneurship, marketing, and other SCINTILLATING stuff, click here.

If you are not among the ranks of entrepreneurs who go in for that stuff, perhaps you are a wordsmith. If so, you'll enjoy this.

Or perhaps you just want a laugh. I've got you covered.

Meeting all of your reading needs, in one post. Just another service I provide.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

What Matters Now--pages 4 & 5


I'm at it again--blogging at Craft e-Revolution. Before you hop over there and take a look, would you consider sending this link to your friends who are crafty?

http://crafte-revolution.com/content/submission-guidelines

I need to get the word out to folks who have crafty/foodie blogs. Put a bug in her/his ear about writing a book, wouldja?

It's snowing again here in Denver--a light, powdery snow, that makes the morning seem quieter. I hope your morning is just as peaceful.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Complaint Department: How to Respond to Hate Mail


Photo by Robin Thom.

From the Complaint Department:

You have a useless, worthless web site...I tried for ten minutes to order some soap and never could get the order accepted. You losers, why have a web site and a lousy, unusable program...fire your programmers, they are fools, Carl


My reply:

Carl,

Thanks so much for your thoughtful feedback. I will make sure my web guy knows about the issues. If you still want to order soap, please simply reply to this email with a list of your choices, and I will let you know where you can send a check. Will that work for you?

In the 5 years that I have had my soap website, this is the FIRST email of its kind. Furthermore, I tested the site and it works fine. This makes me realize that Carl does not understand how to use Paypal. Dear Paypal--please fire all of your programmers, as per Carl.

UPDATE!

Carl emailed me back! It turns out that I was right--he couldn't get Paypal to accept his card, for some reason. So, the edict above stands. Paypal, fire all your fool programmers, please. Also, Carl DID place an order, and said he would send a check. Have you ever?

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Talk About Your Ideas

Ironic photo by Wonderlane. Used with permission.

I am haunting myself. This morning I received my normal email list, which includes Google Alerts. This is a service where you tell Google what terms you want them to search for, and when they find the term, an email with the link shows up in your inbox.

It's handy for finding out where your name pops up, or your business name, or keywords featured in your book, for example. Today, my own name popped up, from a blog comment I made about ebooks. This comment was left in April, 2008. Since that time, I have begun publishing in earnest, exclusively ebooks, and I was pleased to see the word "revolution" come up in my blog comment from 'way back when:

Publishers are floundering with the old model, and need to make money. Eliminating the advance is a big thing, and I believe it will be better for everyone involved.

Yes, the writer will have to write more on spec. However, like other self-publishers, all of my writing is on spec, and I have to do all the marketing, etc. to sell my books. Marketing and advertising and all of that is expensive. Many big publishers don’t want to pay for the marketing, either. Authors are left to do it.

So, if we are doing most of the work, anyway, and doing it on our own dime, anyway, why not publish ourselves?

I’m glad to see someone mention cookbooks as ebooks–I am waiting for this revolution. Both of my books are ebooks right now, and as yet may or may not make it to print. Ebooks are very profitable, on a small scale. All of a person’s recipes can be in a central location, and can also be printed out as necessary. Slopped sauce all over your recipe? No problem. People still want to hold, pore over, and caress a huge, heavily-photographed cookbook. I know I do.

But aren’t ebooks the practical side?

It seems that I was thinking about the Craft e-Revolution over a year ago. Have your blog comments ever come back to haunt you?

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Getting More Traffic



Do you all know about StumbleUpon? I love it--you create a free account, and then you choose your favorite topics. When you "stumble" (i.e. click the button on the toolbar that you will install on your browser), they will choose a site that fits the profile you selected. You then have the option to click "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" on the site.

Here's today's tip, then, for driving more traffic to your site. Go to your site, and thumb it up on your StumbleUpon toolbar. You will then have the option to "discover" the site for StumbleUpon, and enter appropriate tags. This is great for folks who have something for sale, because people who stumble across the site are potentially interested, because of their tags.

Please note the screenshot above. I wasn't getting any traffic to my ArtFire studio, so I went in and clicked on each of my items, and thumbed them up on StumbleUpon, and entered tags like "crafts," "printable," and "quotes from women." That spike at the end? That was the increase in visitors to my artfire studio on the day I tagged the items in StumbleUpon. Little more visibility? Yes.

Those items in my Artfire studio are also featured in my Etsy shop. If you're interested, this is my best-selling calendar. It's not too late to make your own gifts! Hint! Hint!



Related posts: 1. Author Interview--Me!
2. In Talks
3. New Publishing Project--Validation